Started Fated by Benedict Jacka, first book in his urban fantasy series Alex Verus.
What about all of you? What have you all been reading or listening to lately?
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Just finished reading Escapology. Kind of half-baked, extremely cheesy cyberpunk, but it has some cool ideas I enjoyed. Vaguely RPG-ish, there are basically character classes where people have different sets of abilities (although I was a little disappointed this dynamic wasn’t explored more). Inexplicable naval battle sequence in the middle with a different set of characters and only loosely connected to the rest of the plot, more stuff like that totally out of left field, a pretty fun read overall.
I finished “The Diamond Age” by Neal Stephenson and “Hail Mary” by Andy Weir, now I’m working on “Ulysses” by James Joyce.
And just… holy shit, how much more remarkably difficult it is to read Ulysses as opposed to the other two. The Diamond Age is a good bit of sci-fi, if a little dense, while Hail Mary felt like reading a childrens story for how easy it was. Now Ulysses is so massively dense, with no quotation marks, constantly referencing Shakespeare, speaking in 4 different languages thus far, while ricocheting from thought to thought, scene to scene like a bullet fired inside a closed metal chamber. It’s a massive shift.
Just got done with GK Chestertons “The Man who was Thursday” and now I’m starting Tolstois “War and Peace”, which I am really excited and a little intimidated by. So far mostly doing research on the period, will start reading probably tomorrow. I already read some of his older and shorter novels and hated them, Ivan Iljytch aside. I am hoping that the younger Tolstoi had smarter ideas than the misogynist religious fundamentalist of the later period.
Anyways, since I can’t speak on War and Peace yet, here is my review for Chesterton:
Chesterton crafts a humorous and thrilling mystery, plunging his readers and his hero, the poet-turned-detective Gabriel Syme, into a nightmarish chase through London and northern France as he tries to unravel a vast and sinister anarchist conspiracy. It is hard to discuss this novel without revealing too much, so I will tread carefully.
The plot starts out simple enough. Two poets meet in a park and discuss the autheticity of their anarchist beliefs. One turns out to be a detective, the other part of a real anarchist lodge. In the following 15 chapters Chesterton gradually adds layer upon layer until the story seems to have changed completely from it’s point of origin, only for it to come full circle and show that our first expectations were wrong all along. The characters and the reader reach this realisation together: their assumptions have sent them on a quest that is not what it seems. How expectations and biases shape our reality is one of the book’s strongest themes, and it fits Chesterton’s obvious distrust of materialism and rationalism.
The style follows the same arc. At first the writing seems fairly conventional, apart from some comic and eccentric touches. But these grow stranger with every chapter, until the final masked ball feels closer to the ritual in Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut than to a detective story.
That said, the book has clear weaknesses. Its portrayal of anarchism is hardly fair and is at best a caricature. Whenever the text talks about anarchism, it has about as much credibility as my grandmother talking about drugs: mostly sensationalist headlines with little substance. There is some critique of society, but it comes from a perspective that is not interested in fundamental questions and is fairly comfortable with the status quo. The strong religious themes won’t be to everyone’s taste, though I found that they never became preachy. There are also some parts that seem a bit repetitive, but I can understand their addition from a structural perspective.
Overall, I found this quite entertaining and fun. Chesterton is definitely very talented when it comes to writing. However, it didn’t impress me as much as I expected given its reputation. Perhaps I simply dislike cops too much to ever truly enjoy a story centered around them.Gideon the Ninth by Tamsyn Muir, necromantic sci-fantasy. About 2/3 of the way through, and I am pleasantly surprised and really enjoying it.
Saw it on recommendation lists several years ago, and, honestly, expected boring YA with annoying characters. I mean, Gideon is cringe, and Harrow is a bitch, but it’s tolerable and does not get in a way of the story.
I love this series. Although I never cottoned on to the cringe, maybe cause I’m old
I read that last year; I was also pleasantly surprised, but still found it kind of overhyped. Like, it’s very readable, and I enjoyed it, but I wasn’t scrambling for the next book at the end. (I did start it this past week out of curiosity, though, as I’ve heard it gets wilder. We’ll see.)
Catch 22 - funny and it’s good for when you only have a few minutes to read at a time.
Brothers Karamazov- enjoying it, but if i put it down for two days i have to go back to figure out everyone’s name.
Listening to two Joan Didion books - Year of Magical Thinking and Slouching Towards Bethlehem.
Just finished the farseer trilogy, part of the realm of the enderlings by robin hobb. Started the livetrader trilogy which is next in line and I had to drop it.
Book 3 of the farseer trilogy really becomes insufferable, made me hate the main character, and has an unsatisfactory ending. And the amount of sexual assault /rape in the books skyrockets to a degree that makes the act feel trival. I had to drop the first book of the next series a couple chapters in when a character thinks about his sexual assault as a minor paragraphs after meeting him.
SA isnt a deal breaker for me, especially in fantasy. Ive read a song of ice and fire. But I dont like how trivialized it is, and that combined with what a miserable character Fitz becomes I just decided i didnt want to go through it again. So now I’ll need to find something else to read.
The SA of the character(s) in Liveship do end up being important to the story, but it’s definitely not easy to read about. The characters in Liveship are all somewhat insufferable, too, but a lot of them grow through the series.
The whole realm of the farseer collection don’t get… Better. I loved them all, but they were kinda depressing all the way through. If you didn’t like the first trilogy I don’t think you will find any redemption in the rest of the books.
I once read (so this is secondhand for sure) that Hobb spoke about having main characters have bad things happen to them so that folks who’ve endured such atrocities in real life can have a hero that reminds them of themselves. And I’m paraphrasing the paraphrasing, and this is going back in my memory as it’s been a while since I read it.
The series definitely isn’t one where books end and you feel cherry, generally. Half the series focuses on Fitz, and you basically watch his entire life, and he’s far from perfect.
There’s sixteen books, and Hobb squeezes the story out of all of them.
Just wrapped up Surface Detail by Iain M. Banks, the second to last book in my Culture series re-read. As expected, and just as I remembered, I loved it. His political commentary is spot on and surprisingly poignant today, and his imagination never fails to surprise. There are only two things I hate about this re-read: first, that it’s nearly over, and second, that I still haven’t emerged with a single favorite, they’re all brilliant!
I skipped that one (and one of the others) when reading the series, the premise didn’t appeal to me. I liked most of the rest of the series, but Banks had a way of making books hard to follow if you tend to skip days while reading them.
Did not have a ton of time to read this week. I did finish The Memory Police. I really enjoyed it. Not entirely sure i am on tack with how I interpreted it? I probably still need to think on it.
Made little progress in He who fights with Monsters book 1, but its really growing on me. The MC is kind of annoying but everything else I like from the powers to how the world interacts and feels like things continue to happen even when we dont see them. The supporting cast feels importent too where as in DCC it really only felt like we cared abour Carl and Donut for quite some time.
Did start Circe by Madeline Miller. I am enjoying so far but only a few chapters in.
Sandmannen (the Sandman in English) by Lars Kepler (2012). So far a pretty great thriller with dark vibes. I’m definitely hooked.
I also carry 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism by Ha-Joon Chang (2010) with me on the train, though I’m kinda feeling like i’ve got the point already so i’m not sure if I’ll finish it completely or just skip some chapters.
The Design of Everyday Things. I finally got my hands of a french edition. I’m reading it slowly but I’m already done with the first half.
Ohh, a bonafide foundational text! This your first read-through?
Yes. It was a suggested reading from my university years and I’m only starting it now. It is very interesting.
I felt saw when the author said that ingenieurs and self-called very rational people refuse to take in consideration the beauty of a product they are making when it is usable and useful, yet that natural first attraction or repultion of an object depending of its physical appearance is very real and rationally should be taken into account. This was me a 100%. I’ll try to improve on that if I could only remember one thing out of this book.
Awesome, thank you for sharing. The aesthetics is for sure a big part what the text touches on, while still focusing on the experience being usable and useful. Enjoy the read, as a design nerd I genuinely look forward to reading your thoughts when you’ve finished!
I’m about to start my first read of Moby Dick. Currently reading the LOTR books.
I’m finishing Snow Crash and Will start Do androids dream of electric sheep? Afterwards
Good choices!
Currently reading The Jennifer Morgue by Charles Stross. I picked up a hardbound collection called OnHer Majesty’s Occult Service that had The Atrocity Archive and Jennifer Morgue in one. I read AA years ago, so this has been fun.
Have been working my way through debt by david graber, and waiting for an order of books that should have arrived a month ago.
Pretty interesting book about the creation of debt and money, though i feel at times it requires a baseline knowledge in both economics and the english language i dont quite possessThe Outsider by Stephen King. A kid is horrifically murdered in a small town, and the local near-celebrity Little League baseball coach is publicly arrested for the murder with multiple eyewitness accounts putting him around town and interacting with the victim that day. Except the coach has an airtight alibi because he was in a city 70 miles away with 3 other teachers at a conference. Was the murder committed by some kind of doppelganger? I need to keep reading to find out
The show of this was quite well done, but my god was it way too dark
Oh yeah, the subject matter is extremely dark. I haven’t watched the show yet (didn’t even know it existed). It’s pretty typical King though. He isn’t exactly known for his warm and fuzzy stories.
